Wilder Deitz

Ritt's fifth album, POP, is a great collection of songs that show a more rocking/pop side to Deitz' songwriting. The songs pop, funk and slink through classic rock hooks and jams. As is his habit, Ritt invited friends and family members to the recording sessions and clocks in with his most organic feeling disc to date.

Ritt Deitz releases his fifth full-length CD of original and traditional songs, Upstream, on Uvulittle Records. Ritt spent the winter in the studio with longtime collaborators bassist Joe Meisel and guitarist / dobro player Craig Totten, sons Wilder (piano, percussion) and Mitch (percussion) and hammered dulcimer player Dave Foss. Singer-songwriter Sara Pace guests on backing vocals on four songs, including a lovely duet version of the Southern gospel standard "Wayfaring Stranger." Ritt's neighbor Andy Ewen, frontman of the Madison psychoblues quartet Honor Among Thieves, sits in on "Cloudy," an early Dire-Straits-like meditation on living by a road the highway department keeps widening every few years.

AFTER THE MOUNTAINS is Ritt's latest batch of beautiful, straight-ahead songs.

This is solid acoustic roots rock.

The songs move seamlessly from single, lingering melodies to the train-like stomp riffs that fans know from Ritt's vibrant live shows. Like this Kentuckian when he's on stage, Ritt's recordings are the fruit of years of playing - traditional music and rock and roll, in band after band, with pals, family and the occasional rival.